Laptop has 4gb ram, Win10 says it's 6gb?

coopsjc21

coopsjc21

coopsjc21

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Hi,
Looking to upgrade my wife's laptop for her to extend its life a little. It's an Acer Aspire M3 - 581T.

I know you can't usually upgrade CPUs on laptops, so only real option is ram. Looked inside, it has a single 4gb stick, however Win10 system info is saying it has 6gb installed (5.84 usable)? Couple pics below.

Thanks!



 
Oh ok, sorry didn't realise such a thing existed.

Asus specs state 6gb is max for this model. Presumably that includes the 2gb onboard?
 
coopsjc21 said:
Oh ok, sorry didn't realise such a thing existed.

Asus specs state 6gb is max for this model. Presumably that includes the 2gb onboard?
Click to expand...

I would imagine do yes.

I've seen it on a few laptops before. If you take the ram stick out and it still boots up there's your definite answer :p
 
coopsjc21 said:
I know you can't usually upgrade CPUs on laptops, so only real option is ram.
Click to expand...
While that is now almost universally so, for Sandy Bridge there were plenty of socketed laptop CPUs.

Unfortunately, the i3-2377M is soldered (BGA-1023 vs Socket G2 for something like a i3-2310M).

As for the memory, Crucial list it as having 2GB soldered:
2Abzcik.png

And Mr Memory and similar sites concur.
 
If it still has a SATA HDD, replace it with an SSD. That'll make more of a difference than a RAM upgrade. Disable any unnecessary start-up programs.
 
Mujja said:
If it still has a SATA HDD, replace it with an SSD. That'll make more of a difference than a RAM upgrade. Disable any unnecessary start-up programs.
Click to expand...

I would, but it has 120gb SSD drive already.

KompuKare said:
As for the memory, Crucial list it as having 2GB soldered:
2Abzcik.png

And Mr Memory and similar sites concur.
Click to expand...

Acer website says 6gb is max, Crucial says 10? Fair to assume Acer is correct?
 
coopsjc21 said:
Acer website says 6gb is max, Crucial says 10? Fair to assume Acer is correct?
Click to expand...

I'd be more inclined to believe crucial, they'll have tested it with an 8gb dimm which probably didn't exist when the laptop was made and acer won't bother updating the info for old laptops.
 
marms said:
I'd be more inclined to believe crucial, they'll have tested it with an 8gb dimm which probably didn't exist when the laptop was made and acer won't bother updating the info for old laptops.
Click to expand...

That's very true. I think sometimes they just don't advertise anything higher than what they have tested or something. I upgraded an old laptop to a CPU and memory config which supposedly wasn't supported but worked fine.
 
Ok thanks, might grab an 8gb stick to put in. Should I stick with 1333, or ok to go 1600mhz?

Thanks for the help all, much appreciated.
 
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